Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Harvard Scientists Discover Unexpected New States of Light

Researchers
at Harvard University have developed a material that can generate and maintain newly discovered complex states of light. This tool utilizes
polarization to generate unseen structures such as swirling vortices,
spirals and corkscrewn that help scientists better understand light's
properties and its potential practical applications. The new tool - a
type of metasurface - takes advantage of something called angular
momentum along with a second type, known as spin angular momentum (or
also known as circular polarization). "Think about orbital angular
momentum and circular polarization like the motion of a planet," wrote
Harvard's Leah Burrows in a statement. "Circular polarization is the
direction in which a planet rotates on
its axis while orbital momentum describes how the planet orbits the
sun." Using this new tool, scientists have circumvented
past restrictions which allowed only certain polarizations of light to
connect with certain angular momentums. This material allows any
polarization to be converted to any orbital angular momentum, creating
forms of light that could be useful in high-speed data transfer and
encoded communications. It has only been 25 years since light
was discovered to have orbital angular momentum. In this time,
significant milestone have been made into the research of light, such as
the first-ever photograph of light behaving as both a particle and a
wave back in 2015.

Article Compiled By: Kyle Tam

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